


Do you ever think of me in the quiet, in the crowd?

by vodkastinger



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, F/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vodkastinger/pseuds/vodkastinger
Summary: Chakotay waits for Kathryn right after the end of her debriefings to discuss the recent past, the future and their feelings, but will she's been broken by the interrogations she had to face. Will they be able to find themselves again?Set after Endgame, mentions of C/7 during their conversation.Songfiction inspired by "Where are you now?" by Mumford and Sons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A songfic inspired by the beautiful and very sad "Where are you now?" by Mumford and Sons. I started out by following the text closely and I might have swayed from it a bit near the end, but the characters spoke to me that way.  
> I suggest you listen to the song because it's beautiful: it's not necessary in any way to understand the fic, but I think it adds to the experience.
> 
> The text of the song and the characters belong to their respective owners. I do not profit in any way from their use.  
> As usual, English is not my first language, so please forgive any mistakes. There is one single swear word, so I believe that "general audience" is an acceptable rating, given that the rest of the fanfic is PG.

Chakotay watched as Kathryn walked out from Starfleet headquarters and he felt a rush of sympathy and compassion wash over him: she looked lost, wide eyed, surprised by the natural light of the sunset on her face, white as a ghost.

She was thinner than he remembered seeing her two months ago and the dark circles around her eyes could be inferred by their hollow look, even though they were almost invisible under the make-up. She had started to clip her hair up again, he noticed, but in a kind of a listless fashion he didn’t associate with her: a couple of strands were escaping their confines from the sides and glinted in the sunset rays – he would have been captivated by them, if he weren’t so preoccupied by her unsettled look.

She had been to hell and back.

Dragging her crew through the Delta quadrant had taken a lot from Kathryn and had given a lot to do to the Captain: just when Chakotay thought the scale might permanently tip in favor of the latter, the Admiral had come barging in to bring them back home. And that came with a price: Seven had told him what the Admiral had said to Kathryn about the alternate timeline, how he had ended up marrying the former Borg drone and then he had lost her, mourning her for the rest of his life.

He and Seven had broken up shortly after their arrival to Earth and now remained amicable: both of them agreed that they shouldn’t have tried the experiment in the first place and Chakotay was ascribing it to a sort of midlife crisis mixed with his own stupidity and weakness.

After they came back home, they were met by a paranoid environment as a result of the recent war: although the Pathfinder Project had had Starfleet’s approval (mainly thanks to admiral Paris’ influence), Starfleet Intelligence was still recovering from the recent war and had maintained the red alert mindset – and in their view, a ship with two half drones and a number of people who, at a certain point, had been quasi assimilated like Janeway, Tuvok and B’Elanna, was a big concern.

They all had to fend for themselves during the interrogations they faced back on Earth: they were cut away from each other and interrogated separately for lengthy periods of time. Except for the couples, that had been kept in  quarters together, the rest of the crew couldn’t contact each other until their debriefings were over and for Kathryn this meant over two months relegated either to the court or to Starfleet’s impersonal apartment. They had only been allowed to bring some object from Voyager: most of them were still pending evaluation from Starfleet Medical on their biohazard status, because their surfaces could house all sorts contaminants from the Delta Quadrant. At least that what they had been told.

The depersonalization had been a massive blow to him: his medicine bundle didn’t make the cut and during this trying time he had felt like he needed meditation more than anything to clear his mind. He had been housed with Seven and they had had a very mature conversation about their feelings -or lack thereof- for each other, but they agreed to keep up the pretense for the time being to make Seven appear more human to the eyes of the judging commission and accelerate her debriefing. Besides, Chakotay remembered how Seven dreaded being alone: at one time she had almost gone mad when the whole crew except her had to be put in stasis to traverse a dangerous nebula.

Now looking at the small form in front of him, he could only imagine how the experience could have been for Kathryn, who was prone to bouts of depressions of her own when she had too much time on her hands.

 _It came to the end it seems you had heard_  
_As we walked the city streets_  
_You never said a word_

He watched Kathryn take two trembling steps out of the threshold and then dive left, out of the line of sight of the security officers in the foyer, stumbling and following the wall with her hand, until she reached a recess at the far end of the wall, that was also partially shielded from view by some small trees and bushes of the flowerbed in front of it. He saw her bend at the waist and plant her hands on her knees. He thought she might be throwing up and he ran towards her.

Her debriefings had lasted longer than anyone else: when he was finished with his own two weeks ago and had been allowed out of the apartment, the first thing he had done was enquire after her status and then make contact with a former Starfleet academy classmate of his, who later trained under the esteemed Phillipa Louvois and who might know something about the legal aspect of the investigation. It was impossible to know for sure when the proceedings against Janeway would end, but he had commed him a couple of hours before, telling him that they were almost over  with the whole thing and Chakotay had been waiting outside Starfleet headquarters for her ever since that moment.

When he came closer to Kathryn, he noticed that she wasn’t being sick, but she was crying while shaking from head to toe. Her pale face was now red on the tip of her nose and around her eyes. She wasn’t even making a sound: after some impossibly long minutes of silent sobs she took a long gulp of air through her mouth, which she drank down as if it were almost liquid, and then started to shake and cry again, now pressing her midriff with one hand like she was trying to reach for something painful inside and wrench it out of her.

He could see the contour of her scapulae through the thick material of the new uniforms. Those new colors looked so foreign on the whole crew, but especially on her.: they were so used to see those shoulders clad in red, when everyone turned to her on the bridge to place on those bones, now so frail, the weight of all decisions  and consequences.

She was tugging at her turtleneck now, like she needed some extra air, so he thought the best thing right now would be to try and calm her down, so he gently approached her, placed a hand between her scapulae and softly called her name.

She jumped and he winced: at least he seemed to have stopped her from having a fully fledged panic attack, but the results weren’t at all what he had expected. Instead of the mildly relieved smile that usually accompanies the sight of a well known and loved face, her visage was a mix of disappointment, sadness and annoyance, that she was trying to cover up by donning her neutral captain’s mask, although with some difficulty. Something different about her also caught his eyes: she was sporting a new set of pips -better said- she was now wearing  the admiralty rank bars and had the signature belt tightly wound around her waist. The belt accentuated her new extreme thinness and seemed to him like a snake coiled around her, ready to crush her breath out in a near panic attack like the one she had just avoided.

He wasn’t sure if this promotion was a good sign; if the admiralty had wanted to reward her merits or had just wanted to take her away from command because she was deemed too depressed, burnt out and unstable after seven years of being on duty nearly 24/7.

She didn’t say a word, she just assumed a determined look, wiped the tears from her face with her hands and began to walk purposefully away from the building. He didn’t know if she wanted to be alone or if she just assumed that he would follow her as usual, but he did anyway; always one step behind her like on Voyager, her leading position a sign of her unquestionable authority, but also of her loneliness.

 _When we finally sat down_  
_Your eyes were full of spite_  
_I was desperate, I was weak_  
_I could not put up a fight_

It wasn’t common to find alleys in their day and age, but most of the buildings near HQ had to be preserved due to historical importance, so they unusually found themselves treading those almost desert lanes, that gave him both a feel of intimacy and secrecy. That wasn’t the lover’s kind of discretion, though: it was of the underhand kind, like she was actively seeking plausible deniability with their encounter. If no one saw them, it never happened.

She stopped in front of a recess in the wall of a short building they were passing by and pushed the door in. An actual old-fashioned wood and glass door, he noted, detached, then he drank in the soft light of the interior and the tables of solid dark wood that elegantly accompanied dark chairs, with their padded seats covered in red leather. He almost wondered if the furniture was some sort of holographic replica, since it was so peculiar and out of style by at least two centuries. It reminded him of Sandrine’s, but it lacked the joviality of the place: this felt cramp instead of airy and seemed like a place where conspiracy, rather than gold liqueur, brewed in abundance.

She caught the eye of the bartender with a nod, than flashed the buckle of her admiralty belt. Typical of later-years Kathryn, he thought, to take immediate advantage of the very thing she had despised just a few moments ago: he could already see flashes of the Admiral that visited them on Voyager in this newly appointed one that stood before him and this scared him to no end. Instead of opening up at their return, she had already started to spiral down in on herself. He really hoped Starfleet had arranged mandatory counseling for her, because she sure wasn’t going to seek it out on her own right now, not when she was at the peak of her self-destructive behavior.

She obviously felt without purpose now that she had come home and wasn’t even acclaimed for it, but treated as a threat instead, and he knew her past history, from the breakdown after her father and Justin’s death, to the relapses of her depression on Voyager. He could spot those same signs now, this wasn’t going to be a rational conversation.

He had only hoped he could reconnect with her somehow, although he hadn’t taken into account how the interrogations might destroy her. He thought Starfleet would admire her courage and determination, they only picked up her flaws instead.

He wondered if this –only picking up the flaws and never the positives- had always been a common feature of the highest ranks in Starfleet: before joining the Maquis he hadn’t had enough experience dealing with the brass to tell without a doubt, but if this were the case, it would explain much of Kathryn’s personality; why she could never feel _good enough._

He inferred that this place was some kind of Starfleet brass meet up place and deduced that probably her father had shown her the place first. The bartender accompanied them to the back of the pub and into a second room that held a couple of private booths, all empty. They slid into opposite benches at the nearest table and looked as the bartender stood there to take their orders with a padd in hand. Ordering would actually require breaking the silence that now hung like an icicle over their heads and he wasn’t sure if he should, so he left the decision to her.

“Caffè corretto, please” she ordered without preamble “Make it a double” she added as an afterthought.

A double espresso with booze. That was a first.

He didn’t know what to make of the combination of a stimulant and a narcotic: he thought she was either failing at self-medicating or she was hitting just the right concoction to satisfy her taste for coffee and keep her mood steady at the same time. The alcohol could also be because she needed courage to face the inevitable discussion ahead, although he seemed the one to be at a disadvantage: he felt anxious and tentative, while she was the one unwavering in her disenchantment, which steadied her like the roots of a tree.

He chose an unconfrontational, plain drink, a Vulcan spiced tea that, despite the name, was as bland as most of those people’s dishes were. Maybe he was unconsciously trying to present a calm front, convince her and himself too that he was confident in how this encounter would end up with a reconciliation or, at least, a truce, but she just snorted at his choice: not overtly, of course, but just enough that he could either acknowledge it and question her or feign ignorance.

But of course she was itching for the fight. His best judgment was telling him to ignore her, but he just saw this as the first test, so he directed an inquisitive look towards her.

“I know you’ve always been a mild man, Chakotay, but Vulcan tea? Really? It seems like you’ve lost your appetite. But I guess that’s what happens when your _cravings_ get satisfied.”

She was getting confrontational from the beginning. This sort of double meanings were meant to irritate whilst seeming innocent: when she was tired, she seemed to enjoy actually stooping low and being mean, saying things she would normally consider childish: they gave her momentary satisfaction in the irritation they caused in the listener.

“What do you mean?” he answered collected.

“Oh, I was just talking about the food, you know?” - No she wasn’t. She was talking about sex, although obliquely.

“I mean, you had the same old leola root for seven years, I guess you just wanted to try something new and exciting… you know, having a replicator at your disposal in the apartment and long weeks of doing nothing, you must have gone through the whole menu, I guess.” - Oh, Spirits. He couldn’t believe what she had just said. Did she just compare herself to leola root, Seven to a replicator and imply that in those two months locked in an apartment together they had just gone through the whole Kamasutra? He didn’t know if he should laugh or get angry: the metaphor was both pathetic and cringy, but she was still waiting for him to bring out the real elephant in the room. To ears untrained to Janeway-speak this could have sounded like a perfectly normal conversation without any double meaning: plausible deniability, again.

“No, I didn’t. I guess I was too worried by the trials’ outcome to _indulge_ in those kind of things.”

Their drinks arrived with a surprising velocity, even considering that they were the only people in the establishment. He immersed the teabag into the scalding water and she looked on as the bartender poured liberally the Nardini grappa into the tall shotglass he had brought along her coffee cup. His feelings about the place intensified: that liqueur was so posh, traditionally distilled in a small Italian city since 1779, he read on the bottle. Definitely admiral-level.

She drank half of the coffee, then poured the generous amount of crystalline liquid into her cup and drained the mixture in one go. The satisfied smack he expected from her didn’t come: instead she looked defiantly into the cup, still cradling it in her hands to extract the residual warmth of the porcelain, as if she resented the drink for disappearing so quickly. She cocked her head in a quick nudge to the left, and he would have given anything to be privy to her internal dialogue right now and maybe stop her thoughts from swiveling much further down the paths they seemed to be walking right now.

“Oh, ok. So I guess you knew more than I did about my trial” – What was that? He was finding it so difficult to read her right now. He didn’t know what news she had been allowed to watch during the trial or if she was referring to something in particular that happened in court and he didn’t know about.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You said you didn’t _indulge_ because you were worried about the trials. Since you have clearly stopped worrying after all of the crew but me had been clear, you must have known something about my trial that I didn’t know.”

“No, that’s not true. I didn’t… I didn’t know anything about your trial, I was very worried about your fate. Why would you say that?” He was truly puzzled now and couldn’t understand what she meant. He had been scared to death as her trial lengthened way over all of the senior officers’ ones and sometimes he had nightmares in which they court-martialled her, like a sacrificial lamb, to absolve the crew from their Prime Directive violations.

“Because it seemed to me like you found plenty of will to _indulge_ , in those two weeks”

Now he got it. Yes, Seven and he had put up a show for the holo-cameras in the days right after their release from custody. Although they had already broken up and Seven had been cleared of all charges against her, suspicion from the general public still hung in the air about her: depending by the news outlet, she was either depicted as a dangerous mass murderer or as an unfeeling half-machine, which couldn’t be farther from the truth since the removal of the cortical node.

Seven, had in fact, experienced hundredfold the previous guilt at her killings, and was going to start to work through her issues with a counselor: they went on very public “dates” just to showcase the camera that she could laugh, love and enjoy herself like anyone else and this made her a favorite amongst the public. In the end, it was the classical redemption story and Chakotay was Seven’s prince charming, found amongst the hardships of the Delta Quadrant.

It should have been Kathryn’s fairytale, he thought bitterly.

“If you’re talking about my dates with Seven, Kathryn, they were only a ploy to make the public accept her. There’s nothing else going on, I swear, we officially broke up as soon as we arrived to Earth and we were finished way before that… we shouldn’t even have started dating.”

“Oh, no, there’s nothing you shouldn’t have done, Chakotay, I get it. She’s young and pretty and headstrong, just like the type of women you like. Blonde…”

“Don’t be silly, Kathryn”

“…and she can give you a family. I know that’s what you’ve always desired. She’s got no one else and you are her family here. I get the appeal, you can be her lover, best friend, confidante, father figure, all at once”

He grimaced at “father figure” and tried to interject: “Listen, Kathryn, I told you, nothing’s going on between Seven and me. You’re right, I should have stuck to the father figure: I was foolish and vain, but now it’s officially over, I told you.”

“How can It be official when the whole world thinks you’re together? You know, the trial was bad, but the pitiful looks from my assigned psychologist were worse. If he hadn’t been assessing my ability to command, I would have punched him in the face. But you know me well: I’ve practiced seven years of restraint, so I just told myself I had to stretch a couple of months more.”

 _You were strangely less in pain_  
_Than you were cold._  
_Triumphant in your mind_  
_Of the logic that you hold_

 _You said no one would ever know_  
_The love that we had shared._  
_As I took my leave to go_  
_It was clear you didn't care_

“What does your psychologist have anything to do with that? How does it influence your ability to command?”

“It shouldn’t. It doesn’t, because it never was. But that’s not the point. The point is that, to evaluate my mental state, he’s been granted access to my _personal_ logs. I’ve never felt so violated in my life: all the things I’ve never had the courage to tell you are in those logs. Saying them out loud was the only way I could keep them from circling my mind too often. I didn’t have anyone to confide them to on Voyager, Tuvok is the only one I would have trusted to keep the secret, but you know, he doesn’t really do emotions,” she said bitterly

“so I sealed my heart’s woes away in those logs, like a pathetic teenager, thinking that no one would be able to read them without my permission. Turns out, these are special circumstances and because of some stupid bill they approved during our absence now they can just pry them open and mock my naïveté.”

“Kathryn…I didn’t know”

“Which part? The logs? They just did it with me because I was the captain and I have a history: it’s hard to keep your depression to yourself when you’re an admiral’s daughter; every fucking friend of his wanted to know how I was doing after his death. As for the teenage infatuation, well, you did the best you could on New Earth and I fell for you. The problem is that you moved on and I didn’t. I concocted all those little fairytales in my head of our triumphant arrival to Earth, of your declarations… I don’t know what I was thinking” she was almost spitting out the words, like she was angry at herself for her perceived stupidity, more than for the invasion of her privacy

“And of course I’ve written them all down. And he’s read them…do you know how the news of your continuing relationship with Seven broke?”

He didn’t but he suspected. He was feeling so much pain on her behalf, he felt such guilt at the knowledge that his actions for the benefit of Seven had actually hurt Kathryn, as if her lonely exile wasn’t hellish enough. He couldn’t speak, just swallow, while his heart ached. And if this felt so bad for him, he could only wonder how was Kathryn still  able to function.

“He _asked_ me how I “felt about this”, and showed me a bunch of holopics of you two. He wanted to see if I would break up right there in front of him, the sadistic bastard, I’m sure he wanted to brag with all his little friends about how fragile the “Hero of the Delta Quadrant” really was, how I could slay hoards of enemies in order to come home, outwit the Borg and species 8472, but couldn’t escape my own heart.

So I cut it out.

I had slain the last enemy and I felt so invincible; I convinced him I couldn’t care less, that we had grown distant in the last year, and he cleared me for duty.

The worst thing is, I don’t know if I really believed those things I said or if I have just become too good a liar.

Either way, I don’t like it.

I can’t tell things apart anymore, I continue to amend pieces of history in my head, to lessen the shame of my naïveté, and I’ve done it so much, that I can’t even tell what happened in the first place. If I have imagined all of it in my head, if I have misread the signs, if you were just trying to trick me so that I would treat the Maquis kindly, if you were secretly thinking all along how stupid I was for falling in love with you.

So you see, now it’s not enough, now it’s too late for any declaration.

I don’t like it, but I can live with it. Alone is the only way I can cope right now.

 _Incipit Vita Nova_ , here begins my new life… do you remember? Have you ever even liked Dante or was it just something you told me to gain my sympathy?”

He was frozen, he didn’t know what to say. She sounded insane, why had they even let her out like this? She wasn’t some kind of show animal to flog until she performed, but it seemed like Starfleet had treated her that way: she had bent and broken all of her bones to show she could still fit into their strict confines, to gain their approval and maybe, by some twisted transitive relation, honor the memory of her father. He had heard stories about Edward Janeway, but he sure hoped he would have valued his daughter’s health over Starfleet’s pride. But the man was dead and couldn’t tell her any different.

He knew he couldn’t reason with her in that state, she was having some kind of manic attack and words, although true, would never have swayed her. He could only hope that some time relaxing with her family in Indiana, away from all responsibilities and finally interacting with people who accepted her, flaws and all, could be a step towards healing. He would also put in a word with her family and suggest a civil counselor, someone whom she felt wasn’t going to snatch her career away from her every time she revealed she was less than perfect: he was almost sure that the Starfleet psychologist didn’t have the shaming intentions she had assigned to him in her mind, but she was so paranoid at the moment that she hadn’t even felt safe enough to reveal her sorrows to that professional, for fear of appearing defective.

Chakotay knew he was the last person Kathryn needed around right now: if she felt she couldn’t trust the genuineness of his intentions, every word or gesture he could try wouldn’t work on her. Reluctantly, he could just let her go and hope that she would come back stronger and surer of her worth, that she would be able to measure her value independently and not just by how much she could prostrate herself to comply with Starfleet regulation.

She was continuing with her incoherent discourse.

“ I understand it, you know? The tactics to sway me and protect the Maquis… I would have done the same, at least I think. Well, don’t worry, now that we are on Earth you mustn’t keep up the charade anymore. Fortunately, Starfleet has accepted my plea to seal my personal logs and no one will ever know about anything. How stupid I was, how…”

A flash stroked him, maybe he could insinuate himself in the cracks of her flawed logic and turn it against her to make her see a glimmer of the truth. “What about New Earth Kathryn? After we thought we were going to be stranded there forever, why would I almost declare myself if I didn’t love you truly?”

He was hoping against hope.

“I was the only one there with you, you didn’t have any other options, it was only logical. Don’t worry, no one will know: your happy ending with Seven is safe.”

He felt utterly destroyed that she could think he wanted to ask for her silence on their shared feelings, but her mindset was obviously distorted and he could only hope that she would heal first and then maybe seek him out: he couldn’t continue to chase after her when she thought he resented her.

He lowered his head, overwhelmed by emotion and with almost tremulous voice made his last plea:

“Kathryn, you’re right: take time to regroup and be with your family, go to see Tom, B’Elanna and Miral, she misses her godmother… meet with the people you love and who love you, take as long as you wish, but please, please, maybe in one year’s time, when you feel better, listen to those logs again – _listen_ , don’t just read the transcripts.

I know you think that woman was just your foolish old self speaking, I know you think that you’re the Admiral now and you know best or…

I don’t know… I don’t know if you think you’re destined to end up like her, but believe me when I tell you, that I’ve always been sincere. The old Kathryn knew it, and I hope you’ll be able to remember it, in the future, in your new life. If you ever feel anything again for me, if you can ever forgive me, I’ll be waiting.”

He tentatively raised his head to gauge her reaction, but she was staring towards the wooden panel at the side of the booth, shaking her head slightly in little no gestures. She didn’t feel worthy of affection right now, because she still felt _less than -but less than what?_

He sighed, then collected the coat next to him and raised himself from the bench. He ached seeing the emptiness in her eyes and he couldn’t help but extend his right hand and give her a trembling caress down the side of her jaw. No reaction. He turned and stormed out of the building to prevent her from seeing the tears in his eyes.

 _Where are you now?_  
_Where are you now?_  
_Do you ever think of me_  
_In the quiet, in the crowd?_

A year later, he’s now teaching at the Academy. Every morning, when he walks the grounds, he scans the crowd looking for the familiar glint of auburn hair in the midst of the crowd. He knows that she’s started to give sparse lectures on a selection of topics lately, but he’s never had the courage to look at the schedule. He’s enquired after her through friends he knows will keep quiet about his asking, he knows that she’s mostly earth-bound as per her own personal request, so that she can visit Gretchen and Phoebe often.

Phoebe has told him that Kathryn is in treatment with a civilian psychiatrist: Kathryn’s sister didn’t know Chakotay before, but she has kept him updated since the time he had commed her, crying, from a terminal near the bar and had begged her to come pick up her sister and make sure she got better. He has always been tempted to ask her if Kathryn ever speaks about him, but he has never mastered enough courage to do so.

Sometimes he finds himself going to the holosuite and there he recreates his own quarters on Voyager. The humming of the warp core helps to soothe the deep ache that overtakes him suddenly, at the oddest of times: escaping to _their_ ship is the only way he can meditate in those occasions.

 _And I hear of your coming_  
_And your going in the town_  
_I hear stories of your smile_  
_I hear stories of your frown_

He follows her around through the stories that people tell of her: it’s almost like he can see her playing with Miral, cooing at Samantha Wildman’s newborn, giving admiral tips to Naomi.

He looks avidly at holovid snippets, trying to gauge her frame of mind by those few sequences. Sometimes, when he’s visiting the Academy, Admiral Paris comes by his office and drops a curtly “She’s doing fine”, before he starts to talk about his niece: Tom must have explained the situation to him and, although Chakotay suspects he hasn’t forgiven him yet for hurting Kathryn in the first place, he appreciates his continuing interest in her well being.

Shortly after the conversation in the bar, he had arranged with Seven to go out on fewer mock-dates and they had even acted out some minor public disagreements for the gossip column’s benefit. A couple of months later they had announced their amicable split and now Seven was dating casually while he remained celibate, hoping that some day in the future, when Kathryn found her balance again, she would come to him, even just to chat as friends.

 _And the darkness can descend_  
_We can relish all the pain_  
_But I know that's what you love_  
_Cause you know I love the same_

In the meantime he had followed his own advice and had retrieved his personal logs. He had listened to the way he described meeting Kathryn for the first time. Although he hadn’t been able to figure it out straight away at the time, the older Chakotay could hear the telltale signs of infatuation even in that first recording: he had described her as fierce and determined, even feisty. He had said he was honored that someone like her had been sent after him, that she moved tactically with the cunningness and the unexpectedness of a lioness. He had admired her moral compass, especially her selfishness in sacrificing her crew to save the Ocampa, a race they had never encountered before.

He had wondered how could she not be on his side, fighting with the Maquis against the Cardassians and he had admired her even more when she had opened up, about five or six months into their journey, and had told him of her kidnapping at the hands of the Cardassians and how she owed her safety to Paris’ father, who offered himself up for torture to spare her. She was one of those who had fought to even _get_ a treaty with the alien species in the first place: even if she admitted that it wasn’t fair, she couldn’t disown it now.

Chakotay had never been one to get stuck in the past, but these reminiscences brought him a strange, but comforting, melancholy. He wanted to go back to a simpler time, when Kathryn and Chakotay were admiring each other from afar, both unaware of the other’s attraction, and could express their feelings with the ingenuity of new love. At the same time he was comforted that these initial thoughts still remained, although now intermixed with all of their baggage: he now preferred to think of them as the various notes of a perfume, that enrich a complicate fragrance, rather than fallacies that drown a relationship.

Besides, he found that melancholy was nuanced, something separate from desperation, because it was the feeling of having _almost_ lost hope and exploring the could have beens that were nearly out of reach. But _almost_ was the operative word here, he could still hope in reconciliation, he could still believe that the Angry Warrior would be able to find peace again.

 _But where are you now?_  
_Where are you now?_  
_Do you ever think of me_  
_In the quiet, in the crowd?_

The buzz of the students lulls him as he walks through the Academy grounds. He’s still sleepy, but he urges his brain to retain some mindfulness to scan the crowd for her. It’s almost automatic, sometimes he thinks it’s pathetic, but he can’t lose that little bit of hope.

Nothing. Dejected, he lowers his head and proceeds to take big steps ahead, as to sweep the unhappiness away with the swirls of air his legs create.

 _Oh, where are you now?_  
_Where are you now?_  
_Do you ever think of me_  
_In the quiet, in the crowd?_

And then…  a passing warmth a scent, a hand… _her_ warmth, _her_ scent, _her_ hand.

A whisper.

_“Chakotay”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Mumford and Sons have so many great songs that could apply to J/C in my opinion! I hope you liked my take, let me know if this song spoke to you too!


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